Eldritch Horror? No, I'm A Doctor
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The silence in the room felt suffocating as Ren stared at Levi, his mind reeling from the realization that he couldn't remember his own parents' faces. The warm lighting seemed to flicker, casting shifting shadows that made the space feel unstable, as if reality itself was questioning what he thought he knew about his own existence.
"Ren," Levi said gently, his voice cutting through the oppressive quiet like a lifeline thrown to someone drowning,
"All of the One Above All's chosen are a little sick in the head. It's not a coincidence or a side effect. It's a prerequisite."
Levi's expression grew distant, as if he was looking back through centuries of painful memory.
"Even I, who was trapped in this library and forced to read books for thousands of years, have gone insane at some point. I almost didn't recover from it. The isolation, the endless accumulation of knowledge without purpose, the weight of cosmic secrets that no mind should bear alone."
He paused, his fingers tracing absent patterns on the surface of his teacup.
"And in your case, Ren, you developed mental resistance to escape from the cruel reality that you've gone through. That resistance manifests as selective forgetting, as the ability to compartmentalize experiences that would otherwise destroy your sanity."
The room seemed to grow colder as Levi continued, his voice taking on the clinical tone of someone diagnosing a patient.
"Your Mental Resistance skill, ranked at EX level, only makes the problem worse. It doesn't just protect you from trauma. It erases things that might cause you distress, including basic emotional responses like fear."
Ren felt his stomach clench as understanding began to dawn.
"If I hadn't mentioned that you used to have a fear of blood and gore, you would have forgotten that as well. The skill is so thorough that it removes the memory of what you used to be afraid of, making you believe you were always this way."
"Then how can't I remember the faces of my own parents?" Ren's voice cracked with desperate confusion.
"That doesn't fall under things that I fear, does it? Why would my mind erase something so fundamental?"
Levi's smile was sad, filled with the kind of understanding that came from personal experience with similar loss.
"Ren, the sense of longing can also make people scared. Deep, aching loneliness can be just as traumatic as physical danger."
He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes focusing on Ren with uncomfortable intensity.
"Let me ask you something. Have you ever thought, even for a moment, that you want to go back to your old world?"
Ren considered the question, surprised by how little emotional weight it carried.
"I have, a little bit. But it's not like life there was significantly better than here."
The words came out casually, as if he was discussing the weather rather than abandoning an entire lifetime of memories and relationships. The lack of emotional investment in his own statement should have alarmed him, but it felt perfectly natural.
"Ren," Levi's voice carried a note of disbelief mixed with concern,
"A life where you don't have to fear for your survival every single day isn't more appealing than a world where you have to face monsters and eldritch beings on a regular basis? Are you completely insane?"
The question hit Ren like a slap. He opened his mouth to defend his position, then stopped as the words caught in his throat.
"Huh, no... that doesn't make sense, does it?"
A growing horror began to creep up his spine as the implications sank in.
"Why? Why has my thought process become like this? Why don't I miss my old life? Why don't I feel homesick or lonely for the people I left behind?"
"It's because of your Mental Resistance skill and the mental state that you've developed to survive in this world," Levi explained patiently, though his tone carried undertones of sympathy.
"It's like you're lying to yourself, Ren. Your mind has rewritten your emotional responses to protect you from the pain of loss, and your Mental Resistance skill makes that self deception so complete that you can't even recognize it's happening."
Ren felt shock wash over him like cold water. The realization that his own mind had been editing his experiences, his emotions, his very identity without his knowledge was more disturbing than any cosmic horror he had faced.
"Well, that's the point I'm trying to make," Levi said with the gentle firmness of someone delivering a difficult diagnosis.
"All of the One Above All's chosen have to be a little sick in the head. The selection process doesn't create the mental instability. It seeks out people who already have the kind of psychological flexibility that allows them to survive experiences that would destroy normal minds."
"Okay, point taken," Ren said quietly, feeling as if the life had drained from his eyes. The weight of understanding his own psychological manipulation was crushing, making him question every emotion, every decision, every memory he thought was genuinely his.
But something deep inside him, some core of determination that even his Mental Resistance couldn't touch, refused to be completely crushed. After several long moments of internal struggle, he managed to regain some focus, some sense of purpose that transcended his horror at his own mental state.
"Do you want to continue?" Levi asked softly, his voice carrying the patience of someone who had guided many people through similar revelations. "This is only going to get more difficult from here."
Ren took a deep breath, steadying himself against the cosmic weight that seemed determined to crush his spirit.
"Please. I've made up my mind. I need to know the truth, no matter how disturbing it might be."
Levi nodded approvingly, though his expression remained somber.
"The second reason that the One Above All chooses specific individuals is that his chosen have to commit a heavy sin that they can't forgive themselves for. The psychological burden of unforgivable guilt creates a specific type of mental flexibility that's necessary for cosmic responsibility."
"Huh?" Ren blinked, not immediately understanding the implication.
"Yes, Ren," Levi said with the matter-of-fact tone of someone stating an obvious truth,
"You have to have killed someone, at the very least, to be chosen by the One Above All. Usually multiple someones, and usually under circumstances that make the killing feel like a moral failure rather than a necessity."
The words hung in the air between them like a sword waiting to fall. Ren felt his mind racing, trying to process this new information while simultaneously searching his memories for evidence of murders he might have committed and forgotten.
"But I..." Ren's voice trailed off as he realized he was about to say he had never killed anyone. But was that true? His Mental Resistance skill had already proven that it could erase memories and emotions that might cause him distress. If he had killed someone, especially if the circumstances had been traumatic enough, would his own mind have protected him by making him forget?
The implications were staggering. Not only had his psychological defenses rewritten his emotional responses to his old life, but they might have completely erased his memory of committing murder. He could be a killer and not even know it, walking around with blood on his hands that his own mind had scrubbed clean to preserve his sanity.
"I can see you're trying to remember," Levi observed gently. "Don't strain yourself too hard. These memories, if they exist, were buried for good reasons. Forcing them to the surface before you're psychologically prepared could cause more harm than good."